


Four Hours

by agent_wheeler



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Background Relationships, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Explicit Language, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:00:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28409637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_wheeler/pseuds/agent_wheeler
Summary: A missing scene from CATWS following Maria Hill in the moments between hanging up the call with Fury, and arriving at the hospital in D.C.
Relationships: Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 1
Kudos: 50





	Four Hours

Maria Hill has a custom ringtone for when Nick Fury calls. It’s the same on her personal phone and her work-issue StarkPhone. With the barrage of asinine phone calls she’s subjected to each day, it’s the easiest way to know when she absolutely has to pick up the phone. You don’t just let Nick Fury go to voicemail.

It’s three o’clock on a cold and entirely mediocre Wednesday in early October, when Maria’s work phone buzzes with a call from Fury. He’s at the D.C. Office this week, and they’d been keeping in touch primarily by email. She wasn’t expecting him to call - not when they’d been emailing all morning. There’d been a suspected pickpocketing in the junior Agents gym that Maria, as 2iC, had been asked to oversee the resolution of. She’d copied Fury in on that correspondence, as well as forwarding him an email from the Estates team about a leaky skylight somewhere in the roof that was fucking with the electrical systems stored up there.

Moving to lock the door on her office, Hill answers the phone.

“This is Hill.”

She can tell from the background noise that Fury is driving. He’s always hated being driven by other people, part of his neurosis about giving up control. He’ll relent and allow other people to fly him places, but if he hadn’t given up his pilot’s license after the accident that claimed his left eye, Maria would have put good money on him insisting he fly himself everywhere too. 

“I need you here in D.C. Deep shadow conditions,” is Fury’s reply. He’s always blunt with Hill, but this isn’t the message she was expecting. As far as she could tell the trip to D.C. had been a routine one, checking in with Secretary Pierce and touching base with Rogers after he had returned from his mission in the early hours of the morning. 

As far as Hill could tell, Rogers’ moving to D.C. had been good for the super-soldier, and gave him a sense of independence that he’d sorely needed after 12 months of SHIELD nannying. It did mean, though, that getting Rogers to return to New York for debriefing was uncommon, and so Fury often flew out to D.C. to meet him at the Triskellion. 

Hill hadn’t asked about the outcome of Rogers’ mission, she figured that if she needed to know, Fury would tell her, and that no news was good news. Hence why Fury’s words on the phone had made Hill pause. Doing a quick calculation, she replied:

“I can be there in four hours.”

“You have three. Fury out,” comes Fury’s response, before the line goes dead. Hill is immediately concerned by the lack of detail Fury gives her. They’re on a secure line, there’s no good reason not to disclose sensitive information, not unless he’s really worried someone’s bugged the line. Is that it? Is that what’s happened? The thought circles round Hill’s head, and she’s still not quite shaken it loose when she unlocks her phone, this time her personal one, to send a quick text. 

_Sent_ : Deploying. Going dark. Will call when I can. (delivered, 15:07)

The reply she gets back is almost instantaneous.

_Received_ : Roger. N (received, 15:07)

At this point, they’ve been sleeping together for about eight months, and actually exclusive for about three months. Maria is hesitant to call it ‘dating’, mostly because she can imagine how the word would make Natasha gag. Nonetheless, they’ve reached a helpful understanding that they don’t talk about work with each other, and never share details of missions, especially not if they’re covert. It’s a lot of secrets, but it’s the easiest way for the two of them to keep their respective jobs, whilst having plausible deniability of each other’s actions. Neither of them fancy having to navigate New York’s job market right now. And besides, Maria has mortgage repayments to make. 

It’s days like this where Hill is grateful for the years of conditioning at the hands of the US Army. Habit means that she’s always kept a grab-bag in the closet in the corner of her private office, especially for cases like this where she has to drop everything and run. She’s glad that she’s mostly cleared her calendar for the day, and is out of her office door within five minutes of hanging up the phone with Fury. One of the perks of being Deputy Director is that she’s not expecting any resistance in requisitioning a helicopter for the trip.

That means it’s a surprise when she reaches the top floor of the building, the one with the helipad on it, and every single pilot in the room refuses to meet her eye. Agent Harper is behind the admin desk, and she heads towards him. 

“I need a flight to D.C. Sharpish.” Hill instructs.  
“I’m sorry ma’am, but we’ve been instructed that you’re not to leave the building.” Harper replies. 

This is distinctly odd, and it takes Hill a fraction longer than she’d like to recover her composure.  
“I’m sorry?” She asks, putting on her most intimidating stare. A lot of the junior agents called her the ‘Ice Queen’ when they thought she couldn’t hear, and she wasn’t afraid to use that to her advantage.  
“We’ve had an order from Secretary Pierce not to allow you to leave the building.” Harper reiterates.  
“When?”  
“About 30 minutes ago. Look, I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t let you get on one of these helicopters. Secretary Pierce said he’d call you in your office to explain what’s going on. He said he was worried for your safety.” In spite of his words, Harper doesn’t look that sorry. It grates on Hill, but she’s already working on a Plan B.  
“Okay, I understand, Agent. I’m sorry for bothering you.” Hill replies, and turns on her heels, walking out of the room and back towards the lift. Once she’s in the lift, she messages her next best option on the encrypted system Stark had installed on her personal.

_Sent_ : Can I ask a favour? Can I borrow Happy for an hour? Need to get to LGA ASAP. (delivered: 15:23)

Pepper takes a little longer to reply than Natasha did, but the reply still comes through just as Hill finishes changing into civvies. 

_Received_ : Sure thing. Meet at usual site ASAP? P x (received: 15:26)

Hill only ends up waiting for ten minutes for Pepper’s driver to reach her. Once she’s in the car, she starts using an alias to book a flight to D.C. Normally, she’d much rather have flown private in one of Stark’s fleet, but that probably wasn’t the most inconspicuous way to land, and there was clearly something going on here, if Fury wanted her in deep cover, and Pierce wasn’t letting her use SHIELD’s helicopters. 

Hill books the flight seventy-five minutes before it’s due to leave. She’s booked it under one of her favourite identities, Tricia Blackwood, who’s a 35-year-old interior designer from Wisconsin. She tries to offer Happy a $50 tip as she gets out his car, but he refuses it, as always. 

Hill’s sitting in the departures lounge, having made it through security without any hassle (not unexpectedly, she’d deliberately left her side-arm in Happy’s car) when she becomes aware that there’s someone following her. Anyone else would have probably missed him, but Hill’s spent enough time training SHIELD shadows to recognise their tricks. Determined not to show him that he’d been made, Maria pulls out her phone to text Pepper a thank you for letting her borrow Happy, and then to text Nat again. It takes her a while to decide how cryptic to be, but ultimately resolves that if SHIELD is stalking its own Deputy Director, it wouldn’t hurt to keep Nat on her guard, wherever she is.

_Sent_ : Couldn’t req a chopper, so am going commercial. Something feels wrong, just be careful. If you can, head back to the east coast (delivered: 16:02)

Natasha doesn’t reply before Maria’s boarded the flight. Maria wasn’t really expecting an answer, though - Natasha’s never really been one for unnecessary words. Her stalker sits four rows behind her on the plane, and perhaps it’s paranoia, but Hill abjectly refuses to move around during the flight at all. She’s seen enough films where people get beat up in plane bathrooms, she’s not risking it.  
Hill even manages to forget the cryptic message from Fury until she turns her phone back once she’s arrived at Reagan. There’s a message from Pepper.

_Received_ : Saw this. U okay? (received 17:44) 

Attached is a link from the WaPo about a car chase that had allegedly just concluded in D.C. At first glance, there didn’t seem to be anything special about it, until Hill took a closer look at the overturned black vehicle in the blurry cell-phone picture. Fuck, Hill thought, I’d put good money that I know who’s in that car. 

Hill tries to message Fury, to ask where she should go now, but he doesn’t respond. She hails a cab into town and goes about booking a hotel room under her alias. Normally, when she’s in D.C. she stays on-site at the Triskellion, but she’s sticking by Fury’s ‘deep cover’ instruction until she’s told otherwise. She tries to think if Fury had raised any suspicions with her about a mole in SHIELD recently, but draws a blank. This isn’t a surprise though. She’d once overheard Stark complain that Fury’s secrets had secrets, so if there was something he didn’t want Hill to know, she probably wouldn’t know that she didn’t know it. 

She orders room service, and keeps refreshing her SHIELD email account, hoping for some information. It’s dark now, well into the night. She’s been messaging Fury the whole time as well, but to no avail. When her phone finally does ping, it’s not the message she’d been expecting.

_Received_ : Ma’am. Director Fury is in hospital in a critical condition. I’m with him. Yours, SR. (received, 00:02) 

God bless Steve and his insistence on texting with correct punctuation. 

_Sent_ : Copy. Inbound. (sent, 00:03)

Maria had absolutely no idea what she’d be facing when she arrived at the hospital. She hoped to high fuck that Fury had a plan.


End file.
